Seeing as you like stories so much: You are engaged in a fight. You are a skilled boxer, your opponent is not. He makes a small hand movement, which has no boxing equivalent, and is not a strike or feint. You are looking into his eyes. He strikes at you, and you avoid it easily, because you are a skilled boxer. Except that small hand movement was him drawing a knife. Had it been a punch, you would have dodged it, but with the extra reach afforded by the blade, you have now been stabbed.

You are a skilled boxer. Your opponent squares up to you. His friend comes in beside you and smashes you in the back of the legs with a stool. Had you been using your peripheral vision, instead of looking into his eyes, you would have spotted it.

See how easy it is to tell meaningless stories that apparently support your position but prove nothing?

All I see is assumption after assumption. Suppose I am competent, and I beat him half dead? If you pit two men against each other, with all factors equal, then the chance of either of them winning is 50%. Suppose the person intervening bigger, stronger, faster, experienced, and well-trained. Why then does this criminal still have a magical edge over him?

Did you know that the mortality rate for boxing is lower than for horse racing? Robert Cantu, 1995, Boxing and Medicine. So I'd better not mess with any jockeys, right? Whatever people do, people die doing it. Proves nothing.

You have experience with boxing. Fair enough. You believe this qualifies you to talk about fighting outside of boxing. It does not. Boxing is a sport. It is as far removed from actual fighting as any other sport. I have seen boxers try to box in a fight and get hammered. They either failed to realise the constraints of the sport were no longer there, or did realise it but did not adapt. So when someone did something that had no equivalent in boxing, they were left without the ability to respond.

Exactly, and it was a man defending himself who did this. Most strange, when you accord the attacker in such a situation the overwhelming favourite to win. He did the right thing, defended himself, and his attacker was seriously hurt.

It's not about chivalry. It's about doing the right thing. Morals, principles. If I was a Christian I could point to the Good Samaritan. But that's unfashionable. Better, in fact, to disregard whatever happens to any of your fellow human beings. Never, ever, try to help them. No matter how safe it appears, it is not.

Make as many posts as you want, with as many words as you want, with as many of those words bolded as you want, it does not endow you with knowledge or authority about this subject. You have no proof to back up any of your assertions.

Sir, I understand that you may have a problem with me (Sigmund Freud would say you love me lol), but let me assure you that my posts were not meant to reply to you.

But I thank you because you have offered to me the opportunity to clarify how eyes matter in a fight and how much they may tell to a seasoned fighter - I never managed before to explain better this eye thing, and I feel in this thread, for the first time, I have been able to put it in words that are finally clearer (at least as far as my limited dialectical abilities can go, particularly with English).

For me, your posts have been an opportunity to clarify better a point that may be useful to others. To a wider audience, not to you specifically.

Yet I see you insist in turning it personal. Why? Do I know you? Have I done something to you?

I see that you may have reasons to disqualify any contribution I make, in their totality and in the most unflinching terms, with an obstinacy and an obduracy that any persons savvy in fighting would find odd (whilst so many could confirm what i said make a lot of sense...), but I am fine with that. There is no way to persuade a person who has picked a personal issue out of a generalized thread: I can deal with techincal aspects, and explain myself better as much as I can, but I cannot deal with pride or gratuitous personal antipathy.

The street fights we are speaking of, are street fights where your opponent want to beat you mostly bare handed - this is still very classical and happens frequently - instance: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYhYVAm-x4Y
How long would you survive aginst a cop like that, Sir?
I know perfectly how much I would - but you? Are you expert enough to know it beforehand? In fact, experience can reveal to you these things.

And btw in that video who is the guy who is taking it?
The one who waches into the face (well, where his foe's face should have been...) as I repeatedly solicited, or the one who looks down, actually exactly down there where the punches of the cop would start so that, as you (you like it personal right? lol )suggested earlier, one could "see" when they arrive........ and in fact he saw them arriving, and as I predicted, 100% of them landed on his face nonetheless

But of course one can defeat the whole argument in a more consistent manner: in a real situation a guy may take out not a knife (as you suggest) but a gun.

So, what are we arguing about? Against a gun, or a pack of guys with baseball mats, there is no boxing and no aikido that can make you survive - you're doomed. And this whole thread is useless against a pistol or a pack.

However, by the way - you think of guys extracting a knife: you live in a beautiful word Sir - many bad gusy prefer using cutters like this: better to carry, much more dangerous, better hidden, if found by cops can be at least said it was not meant as a weapon, and far more insidious because you may conceal it in a punch.
Have you ever seen what they can do with one of those? I have.

If one produces the examples you think of, there is no boxing my friend, no aikido and indeed no martial art and no "periphereal vision" that will help you.
However, when you wacth your opponent in the eye you do have periphereal vision.
You really seem to know nothing Sir. It's not a fault, but you're passing over sound advice that, with such lack of experience, you should treasure instead...

However, in a great deal of other situations, having the experience that I mention namely the one that makes you know all the given combinations and how they characteristically articulate and travel, plus the ability to watch in the eyes your opponent and understand his emotional condition in the finest degrees, makes a difference that is monumental.
Only your obvious lack of experience makes you believe and argue that such experience would make no difference in many street situations.

Between having it and having it not (as you have it not, Sir) there is an enormous difference - and without having that experience, Sir, you should not venture into fights - particularly not into street fights.
It is, indeed, regrettable that with so little cognitions about fighting, you feel entitled to step into a street fight in order "to help" the others.

But honestly, Sir: I cannot truly relate with a person who is totally incompetent. You have never been in a boxing match, you have never been in a MMA match, and yet you claim to be equipped to judge in the most derogatory terms what those who (unlike you) have been there have to say (as a general contribution to the audience).

It seems that since you have beaten a couple of drunkards you feel like a tough guy, the hero of the neighbuorhood, and believe you can beat guys safely and intervene in street fights. Please Sir, consider never intervening in a street situation - the chances that you have of eventually enriching our statistics of tragic street fights are very high.

Also the unconsiderate way you deal with the coma of the others by labeling such tragic results as something that can be described as "he did the right thing (...) defended himself, and his attacker was seriously hurt" reveals that you're just another irresponsible guy looking for cheap troubles - and the fact you can qualify the coma of a person like the "right thing" and in the same picture think of yourelf as a (I quote) "the good Samaritan" tells a lot about how truly dangerous you can be.

For a person like you, doing the (I quote) "right thing" that you mention (for yourself and for the others), tantamount to this: stay at home, Sir.

The best piece of advice you ever got.

You may think it is given out of anthipaty but it is not so, Sir.
Indeed I am genuinely very concerned for your safety, and for that of the others that you may endanger with your fantasized ideas.

Do the real right thing Sir: stay at home. You're a dangerous man - and yes in this you were right and you may find comfort, you're dangerous indeed. Actually, you are into the kind that is the most dangerous of all kinds.